IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF FEDERAL CLAIMS

No. 09-844C & No. 10-741C (consolidated)

(Filed: September 25, 2012)

SIKORSKY AIRCRAFT 

CORPORATION,

Plaintiff,

v.

UNITED STATES,

Defendant.

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ORDER

Pending before the court is defendant’s motion for reconsideration of the court’s opinion 

and order reported as Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. v. United States, 102 Fed. Cl. 38 (2011). This 

motion, filed August 21, 2012, constitutes the government’s fourth effort to elide the court’s 

legal interpretation of the Cost Accounting Standards (“CAS”) set out at 48 C.F.R. Chapter 99, 

Subchapter B, Part 9904, specifically, the standards for allocation of direct and indirect costs 

codified at 48 C.F.R. §§ 9904.418-10 to 9904.418-63.1

Defendant’s motion for reconsideration largely consists of a selective reading of 

unpublished materials generated during the Cost Accounting Standards Board’s consideration of 

various possible permutations of what became CAS 418. The court previously rejected any 

reliance on unpublished materials to override the text of the regulatory provisions. See Sikorsky 

Aircraft, 102 Fed. Cl. at 55 (citing Allegheny Teledyne, Inc. v. United States, 316 F.3d 1366, 

1377 (Fed. Cir. 2003); Perry v. Martin Marietta Corp., 47 F.3d 1134, 1137 (Fed. Cir. 1995)); see 

also Hamilton v. Lanning, __ U.S. __, __, 130 S. Ct. 2464, 2474 (2010) (commenting that if a 

legal text was “to carry a specialized — and indeed, unusual — meaning” the progenitors of that 

text “would have said so expressly.”). The court adheres to that principled basis of legal 

analysis. As Justice Kennedy said in Public Citizen v. United States Department of Justice, 491 

U.S. 440, 469 (1989) (Kennedy, J. concurring in the judgment), “[r]eluctance to work[] with the 

basic meaning of words in a normal manner undermines the legal process.”

 Each prior submission by defendant was 

denied or withdrawn, and the current motion fares no better. 

 1

The prior three efforts consisted of Defendant’s Renewed Motion For Leave to Serve 

Interrogatories, filed Dec. 23, 2011, as ECF No. 139; Defendant’s Motion to Postpone Trial, 

filed May 31, 2012, as ECF No. 191; and Defendant’s Third Motion for Partial Summary 

Judgment, filed June 13, 2012, as ECF No. 194. 
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One aspect of the defendant’s motion deserves particular comment. First, contrary to the 

motion, the court did not “make[] the word ‘management’ redundant with the word 

‘supervision.’” Def.’s Mot. to Recons. at 1-2, 50. Rather, the court drew upon standard 

dictionary definitions of those words in developing its analysis and interpretation. See Sikorsky 

Aircraft, 102 Fed. Cl. at 52 (citing Rumsfeld v. United Techs. Corp., 315 F.3d 1361, 1370 (Fed. 

Cir. 2003), which applied “standard dictionary definitions and other pertinent regulations” to 

determine the meaning of undefined CAS terms). The court looked to CAS 403, CAS 410, and 

CAS 420 as other instances in which the words “management” and “supervision” had been used 

in related contexts — to check whether those words had been used in accord with their plain 

meanings in those CAS, which they had. See id. In no sense did the court equate “management” 

with “supervision,” and it is disingenuous for the defendants to assert that it did.

This is the fourth time that defendant has persisted in its “grave misapprehension of the 

court’s [prior] decision.” Order of Jan. 20, 2012, ECF No. 150. Perhaps the first instance might 

have been understandable. The fourth manifestly is not.

Defendant’s motion for reconsideration is DENIED.

It is so ORDERED.

s/ Charles F. Lettow

Charles F. Lettow

Judge